Marketing experts typically offer advice on how local businesses can manage their online ratings and reviews. But, not all of them offer reputation management services. In the past, business owners needed to ensure that they had an online presence. This would enable them to tap into the potential of attracting prospective customers online. With the development of websites, having the right content became the need of the hour. Without it, your prospective customers on the internet would never be able to locate your business. As a result, content optimisation services came into focus.

With time, business owners realised that they would need to work harder to secure first-page rankings on search engines. So, they began posting blogs and guest posts (among other things) to enhance their online presence. As the internet grew, social media networks emerged whereby people could connect with each other online. Gradually, review sites and forums also emerged. These enabled people to share their experiences about any product or service they used. As a result, business owners began to realise the merits and the importance of managing their online reputations.

Unfortunately, many business owners do not understand the value of their online reputations until something takes it apart. When this happens, they hire reputation management professionals for setting things right again. However, it is better to be proactive. This would enable you to establish a great reputation before anything untoward happens. This would enable you to weather the storm and take it in your stride. To minimise the impacts of such a crisis, business owners should:

• Be aware of any search on their company that shows up on the first page of Google or any other search engine
• Be aware of any search on their company that appears within the top 20 search results of Google or any other search engine
• Ensure that all their social media profiles and complete and functioning – ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest and Instagram
• Put out a meaningful press release that shares a customer story – this would be useful in highlighting your business as one that is customer-centric and,
• Encourage your happy customers to leave positive reviews on sites such as Yelp – this is useful because many customers don’t post reviews unless they are dissatisfied